Chapter Seven from THE CLIMBER by JUDGE SMITH

THE CLIMBER:
The doctors tell me that is simply the way that a person feels
when you’re dying of cold,
A classical hallucination of hypothermia.
But I know what I saw, and I know what I heard,
and I know what I felt, and I know what I know,
And, these days, things and people that are cold and hard
no longer appeal to me,
And now I try to make a warm life,
and now I understand the joke;
the whole thing is a joke.

CHOIR:
There goes that old mountaineer.
Keeps returning every year.
What is it he comes here for? What is it he finds?
Even though he's growing frail,
says he still has peaks to scale;
our humanity, our vanity,
the mountains in our minds.

THE CLIMBER:
I don’t climb mountains any more,
but still I come back to this place.
The old man in the bar who wants to buy you a drink,
he just likes making friends.

CHOIR:
We aim to show hospitality.
This is what defines our industry.
We welcome all, as we welcome you,
and though we get tired, our smile is true.
Ask any cook, any licensee,
there’s no harder work, they’d all agree.
The strangers come, but as friends they go.
We have new Best Friends each week or so.

• Alternative
• accoustic
• narrative rock
• neo-classical-rock
• songs
• Glastonbury